


A Far Off Place

by giselleslash



Category: LOTR RPS
Genre: M/M, fandom: lotr, orlando/sean - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-30
Updated: 2010-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:28:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giselleslash/pseuds/giselleslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A road trip. Random and rambling with schmoopy love and giant balls of twine. Honestly, this has no plot. Zero. The boys weren’t particularly interested in giving me one so I figured, eh, what the hell. Besides, there are pictures and a soundtrack too - you can’t go wrong with that ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Far Off Place

  


 

Orlando gets a job in San Diego. It’s his dream job but he’s not sure if he’s going to take it. He doesn’t really think he and Sean are California type people. He’s certain that much warmth and sun will trouble Sean’s grumpy constitution and put an end to his weather complaints.

He doesn’t want that to happen. Contrary to what he says to Sean, Orlando likes it when Sean gripes about the weather. The rain, the cold, the snow, the ice, the cold, the rain, the cold once again. It’s what he does and the way he does it makes Orlando smile to himself, a smile he routinely hides from Sean. He’s far too grumpy at those times to appreciate one of Orlando’s smiles although he claims he appreciates them no matter the circumstances.

Orlando knows otherwise.

Some days charm just doesn’t work, nor does love. Not completely. Sometimes you’re just pissed and annoyed with the world and not even smiles gain any ground.

Once given the job offer Orlando fluctuates between yes and no. It’s a place at the San Diego Zoo in their Elephant Odyssey exhibit. He’d be doing what he has always dreamed of doing and his younger self’s desires flare within him.

He divides his life in two.

Before Sean and After Sean.

In Before Sean time Orlando was young and ambitious and wild. He didn’t believe in staying in one place or confining himself to a home that didn’t include the endless African sky. Nothing was permanent and a month was considered a lifetime of commitment.

In After Sean time Orlando was still young and ambitious but nearly the complete opposite of wild. Wild implies a recklessness and tendency to fail at the social graces. Wild is undomesticated, unpredictable and dangerous. Wild will bite the hand that feds it even if the hand has never done anything but provide.

In After Sean time Orlando learned the value of home, the strength of commitment and the wildness of love rather than of spirit. Sean calmed him, set his manic heart to a better channel, one that was less prone to carelessness and more to fullness. Full to the brim with the life that comes from loving another human being more than you love yourself.

The moment Orlando met Sean he realized his wide open dreams could be found in something as small as a man and not in a horizon that stretched forever and ever without end. Orlando was amazed and humbled by the knowledge. Dumbfounded by the fact that sleeping beside a man that snores and whistles at random times of the day has suddenly become good enough, that all those far flung goals aren’t as necessary as they once were.

They are, in fact, useless.

What use is freedom when he has Sean to cover him? What use is the feel of hot African sands in his hand when his palm can rest against Sean’s naked back in the cool dark of night?

What use is there in emptiness when Sean is there to fill him?

There is no comparison and while Orlando sometimes thinks of his former life he thinks of it only with a sense of fondness. It’s a far off time and place and it resides with all those other things that have passed through his life and are now just pieces of memory.

Having to sit still through tea with his gran who loved to pet his curls and sing him sweet songs that made the sitting still worth it in the end.

Climbing his grandad like a mountain that was big and strong and smelled of grass and the caramels he hid in his shirt pocket for when Orlando reached the summit of that laughing mountain.

Splashing with his sister in the kiddie pool his mum brought out every summer in an effort to stop them both from whining to go to the pond to swim. A pond filled with reeds and frogs and mud that went squish between your toes just as six year olds prefer it.

The stuff of dreams, all of those things, but long past and remembered sweetly.

Orlando lives in the here and now and the here and now is Sean.

The here, now and _forever_ is Sean.

Orlando marvels once again that his idea of a lifetime commitment has changed from a month to an actual lifetime.

 

  


 

Sean knows Orlando wants the job, wants it more than he has ever wanted anything. Sean knows this and he wants to give it to him. He does. He wants.

Orlando, after all, followed him across the sea to New York when he was the one being offered his dreams although those dreams altered since meeting Orlando.

Sean likes to say Orlando fell from the sky. Like an angel or a star.

Orlando likes to say that he missed his footing and his clumsy ass fell from the rock climbing wall. And apparently right on top of Sean’s head concussing him and giving him visions of daft angels and mistakenly identified meteorites.

Sean prefers his version.

Sean is a doctor. He tended to Orlando’s ankle after the fall.

No one was there to tend to him after his own.

He traveled to the hospital with Orlando because he couldn’t seem to let him go.

He sat in the waiting room. Waiting.

He pushed Orlando and his newly cast ankle in a wheelchair out of the hospital. Orlando was stubborn and wouldn’t call anyone to get him claiming he was a spider and should never have fallen from the wall. And why didn’t his spider web work by the way?

He was also high on pain killers.

Sean knelt beside the wheelchair and said, I think I’m going to love you the rest of my life, as Orlando gazed at him with glossy, unfocused eyes.

Sean is now nearly ten years into his life sentence and there is no turning back.

 

  


 

Orlando still isn’t sure why he applied for the job in the first place. He knew if he got it they would have to move.

Away from New York.

Away from their first home together.

Away from Gray’s Papaya hot dogs.

Sean pretends disgust over Orlando’s infatuation with them but on more than one occasion Orlando has found crumpled up Gray’s napkins in the pockets of Sean’s trousers.

His heart beats faster at the thought that the man who loves him would never cheat on him with anything but a hot dog.

Sean is always puzzled by why he gets such sweet kisses on laundry day.

Orlando wonders briefly, a moment of fear, if his restlessness is coming back. What other reason is there for him to apply for a job on what is nothing less than the other side of the world to them?

But Orlando’s fears are quickly put to rest when Sean snores once, so loud, that he wakes himself up with a start. Orlando’s laughter is pure and genuine and firmly attached to the ground upon which Sean stands.

And snores.

Sean looks at him, scowls and goes back to sleep. Orlando presses himself to Sean’s side and dreams his dreams along with him.

 

  


 

Sean tells him to take the job. He’ll be brilliant at it. Orlando stammers, falters. So very unlike him for he always speaks his piece with a sure and steady voice.

Sometimes Sean thinks he wants Orlando’s dreams more than he does.

He must because although he suspects the bright California sun will do nothing for his naturally charming disposition he finds he wants to run west at a frightening and alarming pace.

Run and run and run.

Maybe, over time, Orlando has transferred his sense of adventure to Sean. Surely he didn’t have it before.

Adventure osmosis.

Sean knows Orlando fears the job won’t be enough, that once there he’ll remember his initial desire for vast African skies. He thinks he’ll want to leave Sean behind and it scares him.

It makes Sean love him more. How a man that once feared home and hearth like prey fears its predator now sets the hours of his life to run in tune with Sean’s own.

Sean knows Orlando will never leave him and if he did Sean would follow.

He’s not getting away that easily.

 

  


 

Orlando takes the job. Sean told him to, as did his heart.

At first he worries some more, where did all this worry come from? Sean’s the worrier, not him. It’s Orlando’s job to fling himself from tall places and Sean’s job to worry about whether or not he’s harnessed in.

But Sean is excited, can’t wait to move further west, and Orlando’s own excitement grows. To cover it he says sourly, you’re just hoping we keep going west until we’re back in London.

Sean laughs at him, maybe.

Orlando wonders at Sean’s optimism and desire to move far away from all that they know. The last time they moved, fifteen blocks uptown, Sean was convinced they’d never find a proper grocer, a restaurant that served overcooked meat just the way he liked it and, for some reason, a cobbler. Orlando was quick to point out he’d never had use of a cobbler in their old neighborhood and what was he planning on cobbling once they’d moved? Had he suddenly, overnight, fallen into an eighteenth century Germany inhabited by shoemaking elves by chance?

So Orlando wonders about Sean’s willingness to set out on this next adventure of their life together. Usually it’s Orlando that sets out with his binoculars trained on the horizon and his finger pointing, _there_ , as Sean is reluctantly pulled behind him. Now, however, it’s Sean pulling him and Orlando finds it freeing.

Exhilarating.

As he packs Sean’s carefully folded socks he thinks that he might ask Sean if they could maybe take a crooked path down south as they drive themselves to California. He has a sudden craving for collard greens although he’s not sure he even knows what collard greens are and he’s definitely sure he’s never had them.

Yes. Maybe some of those fried green tomatoes too.

Green seems to be the order of the day.

 

  


 

When Sean pulls up in front of their building in an old [Cadillac DeVille](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Cadillac_DeVille_Convertible_1968.jpg) that’s nearly as long as their block Orlando laughs.

What are they to do with that?

Drive it. All the way to California, Sean smiles.

Orlando’s pretty sure Sean shouldn’t be in charge of something so big and barge like. The last time he was in a car he had turned to the gear box with a puzzled look, his glasses slouched down to the tip of his nose, and asked, Orlando, how do I work this again? as he wiggled the gear knob.

Thankfully the Cadillac is an automatic so Orlando thinks they might be fine.

Orlando laughs again as Sean makes to get out of the car to come round to open up his door for him and the car starts to roll. Sean stumble falls back into the driver’s seat and mumbles something about the unnecessary aspects of neutral as he stops the car from rolling.

Or maybe not so fine.

Maybe I should drive, Orlando offers.

Absolutely not. You crash into things.

That was only the one time.

But it was a bus.

True.

A _parked_ bus.

Well clearly we’re intended to get into accidents otherwise they wouldn’t put the brake pedal so near the accelerator. They’re only asking for mishaps.

By that time Sean has the car properly in park and has come around to open the passenger door for Orlando who gets inside and kindly chooses to ignore Sean’s unfair grumbling about learning the difference between his right and left.

Orlando stretches out. There’s miles of room. He looks in the back and there’s a sea of space, of white and black leather upholstery and road trip kitsch that makes him smile.

I like it. Very Elvis.

Very Sinatra. If it were Elvis wouldn’t it be gold and red and sequined?

Orlando concedes that yes, that would probably be the case. Sean grins happily at him, skin flushed with good cheer and accomplishment. He touches his fingers to the hair at the nape of Orlando’s neck then hurries around to the driver’s seat before he gets hollered at by a pissed off cab driver annoyed by his being double parked.

What granny did you steal this from then? Orlando asks, his fingers can’t stop stroking the interior, touching the knobs on the ancient radio.

No granny, grand _son_. You know Phillip, from work? Been in storage since his grandmother died. He’s sick of paying for it, gave me a deal.

Sean’s so proud of his deal, his accomplishment, that Orlando doesn’t say that it probably isn’t the best car ever for an over two thousand mile trip. He thinks they may need to tow a gas tank behind them to keep it filled up but Sean’s happiness is contagious and suddenly Orlando hasn’t a care in the world.

He leans over and kisses Sean’s cheek just as he steps on the brakes too quickly. Sean curses under his breath and Orlando’s nose bumps into the side of his head. It’s perfect. Orlando can feel it deep down in his bones.

You’ve done brilliantly, my love.

Sean smiles, full of pride.

And even manages to switch lanes without hitting the bike messenger just to their left.

A job well done.

 

  


 

It’s the night before they leave and Sean isn’t sleeping. He’s sitting in the window seat in their bedroom alternating between watching the man in the apartment across the street eat pizza while watching an old black and white movie and watching Orlando sleep.

Orlando sleeps the sleep of the dead. Where he falls asleep is where he stays until he sees it fit to wake up. Sean has seen him fall asleep standing up, well leaning, really, against the wall, but still. He has seen him sleep through a party, the noise of people talking so loudly Sean had to nearly shout to be heard. Orlando falling asleep so sound, so still, on the couch that Sean used his head as a coaster for his beer. Sean has pulled him out of bed by his arm, yanked on it until he fell out of bed with a heavy thud, but never once waking only continuing to sleep where he fell, on the floor instead of the bed.

Orlando asleep becomes a party game. People dress him up. Put make-up on him and do his hair. Arrange him in awkward and often times filthy positions. They take pictures with their phones and Orlando laughs when they send them to him the next day. Sean thinks he looks very beautiful in a purple bikini top and fedora.

Eventually Sean turns his attention solely to Orlando. He’s in a sleeping bag. The movers took all their things that morning and Sean already misses their comfortable bed. He’s a creature of habit and comfort but he’s looking forward to sleeping on hard motel beds, and hopefully a few times under the stars in Stella’s backseat. Orlando christened her like a knight that first day.

Sean closes one eye and reaches out his hand. His fingers follow the length of Orlando through the air. The top of his head to the tip of his right foot that is always outside the covers. The left foot is the cold one. His hand moves through the air tracing a map across the contours of Orlando. The man, the road he has traveled for years and years never tiring of the scenery, never growing bored.

Sean lets his hand drop and opens his eye.

What a grand adventure Orlando is.

 

  


 

They’re not even out of Manhattan and Orlando has to pee.

I forgot. Back at home.

Both of them know they’ll call it home for a while yet.

Sean threatens Orlando with images of empty bottles used for loo breaks instead. Orlando shrugs. Sean knows his threats were wasted. Orlando’ll pee anywhere. He’d get out at the next red light and piss into the gutter in front of all and sundry if he wouldn’t get arrested for doing it.

Sean stops at a corner store and Orlando runs in. Sean has to circle the block. There are no parking spots - are there ever parking spots in New York? - and he knows someone will blow their horn at him.

Sean lives in irrational and perpetual fear of honking horns.

Only those directed toward him, however, and Orlando says it’s a good thing that’s the case seeing as how they live in the horn honking capital of the world.

On Sean’s third circle of the block Orlando finally emerges from the store. He’s carrying three bags and Sean wonders at his claim of having to pee. Sean suspects he just wanted beef jerky and those little bags of Cheetos.

I got beef jerky. And Cheetos.

Orlando waves the bags at Sean and yells as he’s coming to a stop in front of the store.

When Orlando slides into the car Sean gives him a look.

Okay. So I didn’t have to pee but we didn’t have any beef jerky in this car. How can that be?

Sean just shakes his head and steers back out into traffic with one hand as he reaches out with the other. Orlando digs in the bag and places a York peppermint patty in Sean’s hand.

Sean glances over and Orlando winks at him. It’s his old man candy. Orlando thinks peppermint patties are only one step removed from butterscotch candies in old man appeal. Sean doesn’t mind because at least his fingers aren’t covered in fake orange cheese dust. Orlando calls that the snack that keeps on giving. Once the Cheetos are gone the fingers are still there to be licked.

Orlando is still digging through his bags as Sean eats his candy and manages to get them on the freeway that’ll take them out of the city. Orlando laughs in triumph as he thumps one thing, then another, on the dash between them. Sean looks over to see a hula girl swaying her hips and a Jesus with a bobbly head.

I couldn’t decide. On the one hand, half naked hula girl, on the other, bobble-head Jesus. I dunno. You make the call.

Too bad they don’t have hula dancing Jesuses.

Orlando nods thoughtfully and takes a bite of jerky.

Now that they’re on the open road Sean feels more comfortable. He stretches his arm along the back of the seat and his fingers touch Orlando’s shoulder because he just can’t seem to _not_ touch him at that moment.

 

  


 

Orlando sings loudly, and horribly, when he drives. Sean finds it interesting because away from a car Orlando is more than capable of carrying a tune.

Sean sometimes thinks he’s biased because, to him, Orlando’s voice is, by far, the one sound the world got just right. Sean listens to him speak about all manner of asinine things. Orlando has no inner monologue and Sean is happy for it. He thinks it’s lovely the way Orlando will say out loud, in that voice of his, that he’s just tied his shoe or the broccoli he’s washing is a particularly pleasing shade of green or why does that one damn nose hair keep growing back.

Orlando’s voice is the background to every sudden reel of film Sean mentally takes as they live their lives. He has a tendency to stop in the middle of things and look around to commit the scene to memory. It’s what he does. Orlando doesn’t bother to stop what he’s doing, he just walks around Sean and keeps on expounding on the creepiness of ants carrying leaves.

They’re tiny, and the leaves are large. It’s not right, Sean. They’re little freaks of nature.

At this moment in time Sean is filming more home movies in his head. His shoes are kicked off and he’s slouched down in the passenger seat. He keeps his eyes focused on Orlando as he sings something about [soul sisters](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmO9Dz2P8Zg&feature=related) and thumps out a rhythm on the steering wheel.

They’re driving south along the coast for a bit before heading off west. Orlando loves the ocean, its vastness and the ever changing shades of blue. Sean likes the sound and the way he can smell the salt in the air, the fishiness of it. The air blowing through the car is warm, he’s just given over driving duties to Orlando and now he’s sleepy.

The car doesn’t have seatbelts and he knows that somewhere, in some hick town, the two of them are going to get pulled over and ticketed but he doesn’t care and he knows Orlando doesn’t either. There’s just something to being unfettered in a car, to stretching across the seats and finding your comfort.

Sean’s eyes are drooping and he rolls his head to the side. Orlando’s lap so inviting he can’t stop himself from sliding down, laying his head on Orlando’s thigh.

Orlando’s leg is bony. He has the skinniest damn legs of anyone Sean’s ever known. He’s knob-kneed and bowlegged, a horrible combination. Sean calls him chicken legs when he’s wandering around the house in his boxers. Orlando squawks and pretends to peck his head. Sean calls him the worst pet ever. Orlando asks, who has a chicken for a pet that isn’t inbred or missing teeth? And Sean must concede he hasn’t a clue. Yeah, says Orlando, that’s what I thought, and squawks at him again.

Sean rests his head on Orlando’s bony leg and he can feel the muscles shift as Orlando eases up on the pedal a bit. He lifts his feet and sticks them out the open window, wind whipping past them, tickling his toes. He rubs his cheek against Orlando’s thigh and closes his eyes. Orlando slips his right hand inside the collar of Sean’s t-shirt and starts tapping out the beat to the song he’s singing on the center of Sean’s chest rather than the steering wheel.

Sean falls asleep.

 

  


 

Sean pulls the car off the main road. He has a feeling. The air is hot and moist and he thinks, maybe, there might be pond or a small lake down the road. A good, old-fashioned swimmin’ hole. He wants to strip naked and run down a sun-baked wooden dock, the old wood giving slightly beneath his feet.

He wants to leap.

The country road is hilly and Orlando is leaning with his head out the window, like a dog, hair blowing back in the wind. He says he’s sniffing out the pond. Sean knows he just likes shouting out car windows.

They come around a curve in the road and there’s a break in the trees. Between the trees the ground glistens and it’s clear to them both that it’s water, not the earth, that’s peeking past the trees. The sun bouncing off the water’s surface.

They’ve found it.

Orlando shouts out in victory and Sean honks the horn.

Sean pulls along the side of the road and before he can put the car in park and turn off the engine Orlando is out the door and peeling off his shirt as he runs. Sean follows the trail of abandoned clothing as he kicks off his shoes.

He can hear the thump-thump-thump of Orlando’s bare feet as they run down the dock. All he sees is a streak of golden skin, save for a glaring white ass, as it jumps from the end of the dock. There’s a shout and Orlando seems to hover above the water for longer than he should, then he drops out of sight as his shout ends and the splash of water takes its place.

Orlando surfaces, splutters and laughs, water dripping into his mouth as he watches Sean leap over his head and into the water behind him.

Good jump, old man.

Got more air than you. I could play basketball.

Maybe. If you were a foot taller and had actual talent.

You wound me.

Sean can’t stop the smile that covers his face as he pulls Orlando to him by the hand, laughing and dripping. Orlando lets himself be pulled but he kicks them out into deeper water once he’s at Sean’s side.

They bob in the water. Grin at each other like fools. Orlando pushes Sean underwater and Sean does the same in return. A dragonfly hovers over the water near them and Orlando reaches out to it but it flies away, skimming the surface of the water.

Orlando is beautiful in the sunlight and Sean’s heart trips. He ducks underwater to stop the glow. The water is murky but he can see the faint outline of Orlando’s legs kicking near him, keeping him afloat. There’s that strange underwater sound, that muffled echo. When Sean finally surfaces Orlando is waiting for him. He reaches out to Sean, puts his broad hands on either side of Sean’s head. Pets him. Strokes him from the top of his head down to his chin. And then again. And again.

My Sean, he smiles.

Sean spits a perfect arc of water from his mouth at Orlando and smiles in return.

Orlando laughs, low and deep, and says again. Fondly.

My Sean.

 

  


 

Orlando watches Sean sleep in the tall grass beside the water. They swam and they swam until their muscles burned then crawled out of the lake to collapse, naked, in the grass.

There are patches of sand stuck to Sean’s side and Orlando rolls his palm over the grains before brushing them away. There’s some sort of leaf in Sean’s hair but Orlando doesn’t touch it. He likes it there. He wants to see how long it stays.

A few clouds have moved in and when the sun passes behind them Orlando watches as goosebumps pop up on Sean’s skin. When he rubs his hands over them they soon go away.

He lays on his back and looks up at the sky, the clouds. Tries to decipher whether there’s a herd of rabbits leaping across it, is a group of rabbits a herd? Orlando doesn’t know. Or is it a goat? Drinking tea.

Orlando’s money is on the tea drinking goat.

Sean stirs in his sleep. Sniffles. Snorts. Snuffles. All kinds of ‘s’ words.

Sean is perfect in that moment and Orlando’s not sure that it’s right to love someone as much as he loves Sean. It can’t be. It can’t possibly be natural to be so consumed, so overwhelmed with _love_.

Surely it can’t be right to be so in love he can hardly stand it.

Still, after all this time, Sean makes him fly at a thousand miles an hour.

Orlando gently turns Sean onto his side so he can press himself along Sean’s naked back, push his knees into the backs of Sean’s. Sealed together. Head to toe.

Orlando wishes he had something because what he wants to do more than anything is to push inside Sean, slow, and stay there.

Sean mutters something and takes Orlando’s hand in his sleep.

Orlando presses his mouth to the back of Sean’s neck, his nose into his still wet hair. It smells like the water. And Sean too.

Maybe love is supposed to be nearly unbearable. If it wasn’t wouldn’t everyone do it?

 

  


 

Can I ask you an X-Files question, Orlando asks.

Sure, I’ll bite.

Orlando tugs on Sean’s finger.

Anyway. Do you think there’s more out there?

Sean moves his eyes from the spot where his fingers are twisting themselves around Orlando’s and looks up into the night sky, where Orlando’s eyes are focused.

There has to be more. It’s all too vast for us to be the only ones.

Have you ever thought about parallel universes? Like up there, near one of those stars, is another us? We’re having this same conversation, but in alien language. And we’re purple. But it’s us. Do you wonder at all?

I don’t know if the universe is big enough to hold two of you, Sean teases.

Orlando punches his thigh.

I’m being serious. And the universe is infinite, there is so room.

Orlando’s back is warm against Sean’s chest where he leans, in the v of Sean’s legs. Sean spreads his fingers, rubs his palm over Orlando’s chest.

Maybe I’m selfish. I want the only one of you, Sean says, his stubby nails scratching at the soft cloth of Orlando’s t-shirt.

What if there are millions of me’s out there?

Then I want them all.

Now that’s just insensible. You couldn’t possibly find them all.

Sean’s foot brushes over the top of Orlando’s. They’re scrunched into the backseat of the car, but it’s nice. There’s just enough room if they fold themselves just right.

I don’t care, Sean says. I want them all. Every purple, green and slightly squishy one of you.

Oh god, what if I have tentacles?

Sean can tell Orlando is actually concerned about the issue and smiles to himself.

I mean, gross. I’d be slimy and I’d have suction cups.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to that.

You’re supposed to say you’d love my slime and suction cups. That’s what a proper boyfriend would do, Orlando says.

A proper boyfriend wouldn’t be having this conversation because he’d have a sensible boyfriend that didn’t worry about having suction cups on another planet.

Yes. Well. That boyfriends is boring. Be glad you have me.

I am, Sean stresses. Why do you think I want all the alien you’s out there?

Because you’re of a masochistic personality? Orlando ventures.

No. I think I’m just foolishly and hopelessly besotted.

See. Masochistic.

In love.

Demented.

Adoring.

Stupid.

Sean tightens his arms around Orlando and Orlando laughs. Pretends to choke. Sean kisses him behind his ear.

I love you, he says. In every language. On every planet. Like an infinite universe.

Sean hears Orlando breathing, deeply. He knows Orlando takes his time when something moves him.

Orlando turns his head to the side, kisses the inside of Sean’s bicep and pushes his nose against the warm skin.

Me too, he whispers.

Sean can barely hear it but he feels it. In his skin.

 

  


 

Orlando is making sure they find every single strange, odd and downright unnecessary roadside attraction between New York and San Diego. Sean has no idea how he finds them, but find them he does.

One night they sleep in a teepee in the aptly named, Teepee Motel. Another day they’re standing under the udders of a forty foot cow in North Dakota and Orlando is pondering whether he should be frightened or turned on by such displays of mammary grandeur. Sean doesn’t know what to say so he doesn’t.

They travel to the Mystery Hole and Intercourse, Pennsylvania, both of which make Orlando nearly hysterical with laughter. They also make him excessively literal, in the case of Intercourse that is. Sean is thrilled that he makes it out of the town without one single ticket for indecent exposure or public nudity.

There are giant balls of twine, enormous teacups and various statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe, his blue ox. There is Carhenge and the Minister’s treehouse. Oh, and a corn palace too.

They stop at every drive-in and roadside diner. Orlando insists on being called The Fonz. He asks Sean to the next Sock Hop and wonders if he wouldn’t mind going steady and wearing his ring. Sean isn’t sure he can handle one more plate of cheesy chili fries without a coronary of some sort.

But to Sean it’s worth it. Watching Orlando devour the country like he does everything in his life, with gusto and joy, makes Sean just as outrageously joyful as Orlando.

Orlando is constantly filled with wonder. He is curious and will talk to anyone that will talk back to him. Sean walks out of a convenience store in Iowa to find Orlando playing checkers with a man smoking a pipe. They are sitting on overturned five gallon buckets with a checkerboard between them. Sean waits in the car and does a crossword puzzle. Orlando loses the game but he bounces back to the car and says, A pipe! He was smoking an actual corncob pipe, Sean! as Sean starts up the car. His name is Elmer, Orlando continues as he waves goodbye to Elmer, he plays a mean game of checkers.

Somewhere in the middle they stop and listen to a polka band. A white-haired lady wearing a big, puffy checkered dress grabs Orlando’s hands and asks him to dance. How did you get such eyes, she asks him as he happily follows her to the dance floor. He has no clue what he’s doing so he watches the other dancers for a second or two, looks at Sean and shrugs. He lets out a whoop and starts stomping and twirling his checkered lady around. She laughs. Orlando laughs. Sean films it all in his head so a day, or two, or ten years down the line he can replay it and repeat, this is why I love him, this is why I love him, this is why.

This is why.

Orlando makes his rounds with the polka ladies that night and drags Sean along with him. The ladies compliment Orlando’s laughter and beautiful smile, they remark at Sean’s handsomeness and debonair voice. Even though, to Sean, polka music is one step up from a screeching cat he can’t remember when he danced so much or laughed so foolishly.

At the end of the night Orlando pulls Sean away from the band and the dancers into the darkness of the night. He kisses him long and slow and dances with him just as long and slow as a couple members of the band abandon their polka oompa to play an aching tune that’s fit for Ella Fitzgerald to sing of lost love and seemingly hopeless hope over.

Sean closes his eyes and hums.

This is why.

 

  


 

I need a jar.

Sean looks up at Orlando. He’s sitting next to him cross-legged and his bare knee is brushing against Sean’s side. Sean takes a hand out from behind his head to lay it on Orlando’s knee. His thumb brushes over the knobby knee bones.

Jar?

For the lightning bugs. Lookit them all.

Sean moves his eyes away from Orlando to look up at the sky. He’s lying on the ground and only now realizes that the stars above him are moving, now that Orlando’s mentioned it.

Orlando raises a hand above his head, stretches his fingers and little sparks of light flitter around his fingertips. He smiles.

Sean has to stop himself from saying something daft.

I love you, he says instead.

Orlando lets his hand drop. He grins at Sean and makes a strange growling noise that sounds content and happy all at once. He leans over Sean and places both his palms on his stomach. He rubs circles into Sean, slow, then fast until the movement of his hands hikes Sean’s t-shirt up and reveals the skin beneath. Orlando is still making his happy humming growl sounds as he bends down to lay a wet, noisy kiss just above Sean’s bellybutton. He keeps his nose and lips pressed against his stomach. Sean takes his hand off Orlando’s knee to run it from the base of his neck up through his hair to the top of his head, making the hair stand on end.

Are you looking for truffles down there, Sean asks as he raises his head from the ground to look down at Orlando snuffling around his stomach.

Orlando makes another noise and kisses Sean twice. One regular, one Eskimo.

I love your stomach, Orlando says as he sits back up and starts rubbing it again. It smells like oranges.

Sean laughs. He can’t help it. He supposes it’s best Orlando said oranges and not something more sinister. He decides not to comment. Orlando looks at him and grins, a touch of the maniacal about it with the hair on the back of his head sticking out in every direction.

I still need a jar for those lightning bugs though. Somehow I feel my empty Big Gulp just wouldn’t provide the same magic.

Orlando uncrosses his legs and turns to his side, curls into a ball as he lays down perpendicular to Sean, his head on Sean’s stomach.

Sean plays with the fingers of Orlando’s left hand, the one that’s laying on the ground between them, palm up. He watches Orlando look up at the lightning bugs. He knows his eyes are wistful, longing, even though he can’t properly see them in the dark.

He wants to get Orlando a jar.

Suddenly it seems like the most important endeavor in the world. Nothing could be as important as getting Orlando exactly what he wants. It pains Sean he wants it so much.

There’s a farm down the road. Maybe he could drive down there and ask if they had one to spare. It’s a strange request, he’ll more than likely scare the farmers out of their wits - mad Englishman in search of mason jar - but he doesn’t care.

He squeezes Orlando’s fingers.

I’ll get you one.

Orlando laughs, kind of a, yeah right.

No. I will, Sean insists. There’s that farm we passed. Before we stopped.

Don’t be obtuse, Sean. What’re you going to do? Ring their bell at ten at night begging for empty jars. You’ll get a shotgun pointed at you.

They won’t point a shotgun at me.

How do you know? This could be _Deliverance_ territory.

You want a jar. I’m going to get you one.

Sean rolls away from Orlando and stands up. Orlando looks up at him from the ground where he’s stretched out onto his back in Sean’s absence.

You pick the fucking oddest things to get chivalrous about, man.

But chivalrous I am, Sean proclaims as he walks through the tall, green grass toward the car.

Make sure you come back without any extra holes. I like the ones you have just fine, there needn’t be more, Orlando shouts as he sits up.

Sean waves him off.

So, instead of a white horse and sword are you going to come back riding one of those cows over there, empty jar held aloft? Orlando asks.

I am, Sean shouts over his shoulder. Keep an eye on the horizon, my fair one. When you hear the melodic tones of Bessie’s cowbell you’ll know I have succeeded in my quest.

Sean gets into the car and he can hear Orlando’s cackling laughter floating in through the open windows along with the warm night breeze that’s thick with country smells.

He’s turning the car around to head back the way they came when he sees something out the corner of his eye. Orlando. Running alongside the car. Laughing and waving. Hollering at the top of his lungs.

I love you, you crazy fuck. Don’t squeal like a pig.

Sean can barely drive for laughing. He’s slow to accelerate and Orlando is keeping pace with the car. He’s singing.

_Bravely bold Sir Robin rode forth from Camelot. He was not afraid to die, oh brave Sir Robin. He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways, brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin…_

Sean keeps laughing. Tears are coming to his eyes and he waves out the window at Orlando to shoo. Go away.

Stop singing, you stupid shit, he yells. I’m going to drive into the ditch.

Orlando runs faster, sings louder.

_He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp, or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken…his head smashed in and heart cut out, and his liver removed, and his bowels unplugged, and his nostrils raped and his bottom burned off and his penis…*_

Orlando shouts, penis, especially loud and starts all over again. Sean finally manages to make his foot work and he speeds up, looks in the rearview mirror and sees Orlando collapse into a laughing pile, disappearing out of sight as the grass swallows him up.

Sean is still laughing, his heart is pounding and the tears in his eyes finally slip down his cheeks. He leaves them there and keeps laughing to himself, the spurts of laughter slow to die out.

More than a mile down the road the bursts of laughter have slowed, spaced themselves out more. The tears are still streaming down his face and he thinks he might be slightly hysterical. He thinks the night itself is playing tricks on him. It’s too perfect. His insides are suddenly pushing outward, trying to break out of his skin. He’s so full of Orlando he starts to shake. And laughs again.

He’s gone mental. He knows it. Orlando has finally driven him mad with happiness and love.

He laughs another time, but in relief. He’s gone mental with love. That’s all. Orlando’ll understand.

He’ll tell him when he gets back with the jar.

 

  


 

They have no set course. There’s no rhyme or reason to where they go or when they go there. They have over a month, nearly a month and a half, to make their way from New York to San Diego and they’re using it all. Every single day.

Orlando can’t wait to start his new job. He’s excited. Nervous. About ready to vomit if he thinks about it too much. But he doesn’t, think about it too much, because Sean is there beside him talking about the smell of the air or the rolling golden hills of wheat at the horizon.

Or maybe he’s just asking him the answer to seven down on his crossword.

Sean has become obsessed with crosswords. He does them in pen. He claims that’s a mark of intelligence. Orlando thinks it a mark of being a nerd. Sean buys little books of crosswords at gas stations and proceeds to spend the next three hours asking Orlando a four letter word for, ‘enthusiastic vigor.’

Orlando says it’s cheating if he’s the one doing three-quarters of the crossword. Sean frowns and says, not three-quarters, one-quarter. Maybe. Or half. Possibly half, but definitely not three-quarters. Definitely not.

And Orlando asks him if he buys his underwear at K-Mart.

Sean misses the joke entirely and Orlando reaches out to run his hand over the back of Sean’s neck, over his shoulder and down his arm. Orlando loves it when Sean misses the point.

I adore you, Orlando smiles.

Sean looks up, confused. He looks over at Orlando, sees him smiling and gives him a half smile in return.

I adore you too, he says. Absently. His crossword far more important.

Let’s go to Indiana, Orlando says. There’s a town there called French Lick. I want to French lick you in French Lick.

Sean is chewing on the end of his pen. Mulling over a clue.

What’s the difference between a French lick and a regular one, he asks.

Is that twenty-four across?

Hm. Funny.

A French lick involves cheese. And surrender.

Sean makes a happy noise as he figures out a clue and starts writing down a word. Orlando would make fun of him, tell him he sounds like he squeaks, but that would only make him conscious of it and he’d try to stop it. Orlando likes the happy crossword squeaks Sean produces so he stays quiet on the matter.

It’s cute, Sean mumbles. Your hatred of the French.

I’m British. I’m supposed to hate the French. What’s wrong with _you_? Clearly you’ve forgone your lessons on how to be properly British. Drinking tea and mumbling and fumbling about like Hugh Grant doesn’t qualify.

Sean laughs and mumbles something under his breath that is very Hugh Grant-ish in nature.

Anyway, Orlando continues. I googled it. I googled French Lick, Indiana. Well, not the town itself, I just typed in, ‘towns with dumb names’ and it popped up. I also want to go to Ding Dong, Bigfoot and Oatmeal, Texas.

Ding Dong, huh?

Man, apparently being drunk while naming your town is okay in Texas. I think I’m going to like it there.

What’s in Ding Dong, Texas?

Hopefully a giant statue of the town’s founder.

Monsieur Ding Dong?

Dirty French, Orlando mutters.

Sean stops staring at his crossword puzzle for a moment and sets it on his lap. He watches Orlando for a while. A long while. He watches him mutter more about the French and towns with stupid names. He watches him drive. He watches as he fiddles with the radio until he finally finds a song he can sing to.

Sean watches him for a long, long while and Orlando, so used to Sean’s eyes on him, isn’t bothered by the attention.

Finally, long minutes after their conversation has passed, Sean agrees.

Yes. Let’s go to Indiana.

Orlando doesn’t respond because he knew Sean would agree, him saying so is just a formality, something to say and he was heading there anyway.

You can go wherever you want, Sean continues. I’ll follow.

 

  


 

They’re somewhere in Oklahoma. There’s a storm coming upon them. They’re stopped on the side of the road, top up on the car, to watch it work it’s way across the horizon in front of them. They’ve never seen anything like it. A wall of clouds. Great streaks of lightning hitting the ground.

Probably not the best place to be, Sean says as Orlando pulls him closer. Pulls him away from the steering wheel and back against his side.

What? You mean in a big metal car on the side of the road in a big open field? Nah. We’re fine.

Sean laughs and Orlando leans against him.

If a tornado drops out of that thing you best be on the lookout for flying monkeys, Orlando says.

Sean knows Orlando’s aversion to flying monkeys.

I’ll protect you.

See that you do.

They watch the storm and listen to the sound of thunder. Orlando presses his nose into Sean’s hair and inhales. He thinks it smells like the storm.

Or maybe that’s just in his head.

 

  


 

They swing south, through Arizona. Orlando wants to see Monument Valley so they take a tour. They’re probably the worst tour takers in the world Sean decides. Orlando never stops talking and asking questions. Sean worries that the vehicle they’re in might explode at any given moment. He’s positive it hasn’t been serviced since 1973.

At least.

The Navajo tour guide is patient with them both. He answers Orlando’s questions and he reassures Sean that, yes, the jeep is fine, and no, they won’t break down and die in the desert.

Orlando rubs the center of Sean’s back and gives him a grin.

There, there, Sean.

Orlando is sweet rather than patronizing and Sean appreciates it. After a while, with Orlando’s hand warm on the center of his back, he realizes the beauty around him and forgets his worries.

Until Orlando brings up rock climbing.

Sean stares up at the sheer rock faces and gets a bit sick. Orlando goes on and on about climbing the rock walls. God, wouldn’t that be brilliant? Sean thinks it’s the worst idea ever.

Their guide tells Orlando that climbing is strictly prohibited. Orlando frowns. Sean seriously considers kissing their guide. But he doesn’t. He thinks they might have traumatized him enough already.

 

  


 

They’re getting closer and closer to San Diego. They’re a day out at the most. Sean notices Orlando’s tension and he wants more than anything to assure him he’ll be fine.

Sean knows Orlando doesn’t want to fail. Well no one _wants_ to fail, do they? But Orlando is more bothered by failure than most. Sean believes it’s one of the many things that draw them together, their perfectionism, their loathing of failure. It’s one of those thousands of things the rest of the world can’t see but they can.

They can.

Orlando appears careless and easy-going to the world at large. Sean sees into him. Sean sees how much he cares. He’s careful, not careless and there’s a great difference between the two. Orlando wants to be perfect. At everything. Failing is not an option he ever considers. Failure makes his heart pound in his chest until Sean lays his hand over it and whispers, it’s alright, it’s okay. It’s only then that the pounding stops, but the pain remains.

Orlando feels everything so acutely that sometimes Sean wants to shake him. He wants to tell him he can’t feel everything like he does, he can’t _feel_ so much. He can’t. It’ll drive him crazy and cause him sadness. It’s like Sean is trying to wrap the world in bubble wrap for Orlando and he knows it isn’t right. Orlando would never allow it and it’s ridiculous of him to want to do such a thing at all.

Sean thinks of the spontaneous bursts of love that shoot out from Orlando. He thinks of all things Orlando does, all the odd little acts of love, and he knows he’d never want to stop any of that. With the good comes the bad, but the good far outweighs the bad and Sean figures they can cope with the bad when it gets there but until that time the good is all he sees. All that matters in the end.

They spend their last night on the road in Stella’s backseat. They don’t fit but they don’t sleep anyway. They talk. They wonder. They make up stories about their new life and their new home. Sean’s stories center around finding the perfect dry cleaner and somehow Orlando’s center around food and aliens. Sean thinks it’s par for the course. They’re just the same in the west as they were in the east and that makes them content.

An entire country fails to change them and that they knew from the start.

To Orlando, Sean will always be Sean. No matter the place. A bit meticulous, yet, oddly, a bit scatterbrained as well. A bit like the man that always makes his world okay and makes him happy to be alive.

To Sean, Orlando will always be Orlando. No matter the coast. A bit dramatic, yet, oddly solid and sure as well. A bit like the man whose kisses always taste like something sweet and makes him wonder everyday just how it was he got so very, very lucky.

They pull up to their new house where all their furniture and boxes are already stacked waiting for Orlando and Sean to set them right.

Orlando shoves his hands in his back pockets and looks around.

Feels like home, doesn’t it?

Sean looks at Orlando.

I think I’m inclined to agree.

 

  


 

 ***** I shouldn’t have to explain, but Orlando’s song is gratuitously and very fondly stolen from _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_. Orlando’s a nerd like that *g*


End file.
